EDITOR’S NOTE: Manitoulin is being transformed with the influx of new residents and business owners who bring with them fresh ideas, experiences and perspectives that are enriching the area. Some individuals and families are still unpacking boxes, having only moved in the past month or two, while others made the move over the last few years and are now comfortably established in their new communities. Here are some of their stories.
by Heather Marshall
If moving frequently and making many new friends in the process is your fancy, there’s no life like the ministry as Lois and Randy Morritt discovered during their nearly 50 years of marriage and ministering to small congregations across Ontario.
Randy was born and raised in Collingwood. After finishing high school in 1970, he moved to Beamsville to attend Great Lakes Bible College where he studied to become a Church of Christ minister. During his second year there he met Lois Huntsman who was raised in Beamsville and a Grade 12 student Great Lakes Christian High School at the time. Part way through her last year of high school she transferred to the Bible College.
It turned out the two had met years before at a church summer camp, but their relationship only began while in college. After dating for about a year and a half the couple married in July 1973 following Randy’s graduation with a Diploma of Biblical Studies (Honours). That was the starting point of what would become an itinerant life with moves every few years as Randy took on new positions as pastor in churches throughout southern and southwestern Ontario and, eventually, Northern Ontario too.
Their first stop was Hamilton where Randy started out his preaching life. Their eldest child, Jennifer, was born there in 1975 during their stay that lasted two-and-a-half years. That posting was followed by a move to Port Colborne where, two years later, their son Benjamin was born during a historic snowstorm that hit the area. Their third child, Bruce, was born in 1979 in Sarnia, their next destination, where they settled down for roughly three years. With the growing demands of raising a young family, Randy supplemented his part-time preaching salary by working as a process operator for Shell Canada.
Caught in the sandwich generation, the couple moved back to Beamsville in the early 1980s to help Lois’s elderly parents who were finding it increasingly difficult to run their mink farm. Lois and Randy ran the operation for about three-and-a-half years but closed the business down when they were not able to make a needed expansion.
When the local Beamsville church offered Randy a full-time position as pastor the family went back on the ministry circuit. After about three years, the church wanted to sponsor the Morritts to go to a mission site, but it was not an opportune time to pick up roots. About the same time, the Great Lakes High School was looking for a food service manager, a position Randy took on while he preached for several smaller congregations that needed a minister. He had worked in a food kitchen in a hospital as a teenager. Lois joined him at the school as an assistant in the kitchen.
Randy’s next job was in a packaging plant in Oakville, a job he held for three years. He served as a replacement pastor to fill in as needed at numerous congregations in the region during that period. At one point he returned to the original church he began preaching at in Hamilton in the early ‘70s.
Among the numerous stops along the way was a six year stay in Meaford in the Georgian Bay area where Randy preached full-time before returning to his childhood congregation in Collingwood where they lived for another three years.
The couple’s taste of living in the mid-North whet their appetite for opportunities further north in Ontario. In 2008 they moved to Thessalon where they stayed for eight years, the longest they stayed anywhere. By then, Randy was ready to at least semi-retire, a good thing as it turned out when their son Bruce, living in St. Catharines, needed help with childcare after his marriage broke down. For the next six years, Lois and Randy helped to raise their grandchildren and, as he had done so many times before, Randy went back to preaching in Hamilton and other nearby communities.
The couple expected to live their remaining years in Southern Ontario, slowing down to enjoy a well-earned retirement, when Randy was asked to consider making one more move, this time back to Northern Ontario to serve as pastor at the Ice Lake Church of Christ on Manitoulin. As their son’s children were becoming independent and he no longer needed their full-time support, Lois and Randy were immediately tempted as they had loved their time living and working in Thessalon. They toyed with the idea for several months and consulted with their children before making the trip to the Island to check things out in August 2022.
“My initial reaction to the invitation was to ask ‘are you sure you want me here? I’m 70!’” says Randy, “but I was definitely keen to make the move. I just didn’t want to impose that on Lois as she was near our family and her hometown of Beamsville, and I wanted to make sure it would be a good move for her.”
“I wasn’t hard to convince,” says Lois. “We had visited Manitoulin once previously when we had attended a wedding years earlier, and we knew we loved the North, so we concluded this would be a good fit. We decided this should be our next—and, we hope, final—stop.”
With the help of their sons, who moved up their personal belongings in October, Lois and Randy started settling into their new home next door to the church in early November 2022. They’re now looking forward to their new Northern life.
“We have no preconceptions but great expectations. We’ve been well received by members of the congregation and local people we’ve met since arriving. There are so many good people here. We’re looking forward to getting to know more about the community and becoming involved in local activities. We want this to be our long-term destination.”
*Heather Marshall and her husband worked as journalists and consultants in the National Capital Region for more decades than they care to admit before making their Sandfield cottage their permanent home. A lifelong learner, Heather loves discovering new things and people and relishes the opportunity to write about newcomers to the Manitoulin. If you would like to share your story or know of recent arrivals we should meet, send a message to HAMarshall@proton.me
